Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening Up Possibilities For Chronic Pain In Disability Rhetoric And Rhetoric And Composition, Hilary Selznick

Theses and Dissertations

In the dissertation “Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening up Possibilities for Chronic Pain in Disability Rhetoric and Rhetoric and Composition,” Hilary Selznick argues that pain is rhetorical, accessible, and communicable to those without the lived experience of chronic pain. Additionally, she argues for the necessity of considering chronic pain as a disability and not merely as a symptom of a disability. In order to make these arguments possible, Selznick crafts a political-relational-rhetorical methodology that challenges restrictive models of disability and theoretical and commonplace assumptions that pain is resistant to language. Specifically, Selznick’s methodology, which combines disability scholar and activist Alison …

After The Shoe Fits: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Four Versions Of The Cinderella Narrative, Faith L. Boren

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fairy tales hold the power to influence societies and to challenge societal injustices, and the story of Cinderella exemplifies both of these roles. In this study, I conduct a rhetorical analysis of four different versions of the Cinderella narrative: Charles Perrault’s “Cendrillon,” the Brothers Grimm’s “Ascenputtel,” Anne Sexton’s "Cinderella,” and Disney’s Cinderella (2015). I examine Perrault’s “Cendrillon” and the Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” using constitutive rhetoric. This theory operates around the basic premise that rhetoric holds the power to aid in the shaping of societies. While analyzing “Cendrillon” and “Aschenputtel,” I specifically look for themes of classism and nationalism, respectively. I then …

Transforming Information Literacy Through Librarian/Course Instructor Collaboration: A Case Study, Lauren R. Matacio, Bruce Closser

Journal of Adventist Libraries and Archives

This paper looks at librarian/course instructor collaboration in higher education and draws specific lessons from the two-year experience of a librarian embedded into an advanced college writing class. The case study pays particular attention to how collaboration influences students' development of research and writing skills and attitudes, and the instructional design of the course.

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

How Native American Rappers Communicate And Create A Modern Identity, Hannah J. Berge

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Current research concerning identity and Native Americans is sparse outside the realm of expressly Native American scholarship. While most conversations about identity and Native Americans focuses on historical and political aspects, many sources do not explore alternative avenues of contemporary identity creation. This thesis uses Kenneth Burke’s pentad to analyze the lyrics for “AbOriginal” by Frank Waln. The pentad is used to analyze each line of the rap. A new term, alter-agent, is used to identify agents who the agent either associates with or who the agent views as hindering his progress. There is then a count of the number …

Unboxing Magic: An Exploratory Ethnography Of A Collectible Card Game Discourse Community, Rodolfo Barrett

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This exploratory ethnography hopes to turn communication scholars’ attention to tabletop gaming communities and genres by presenting relevant theory and a pilot study on the community of Magic: The Gathering, the world’s most popular collectable card game. By approaching Magic’s gameplay as discursive action and its fandom as a discourse community, this thesis applies a critical genre lens to inclusivity issues in Magic as a microcosm of “geek” or gamer subcultures. A body of qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with Magic players and ethnographic observations of both local weekly tournaments (Friday Night Magic events) in …

The Role Of Refugee Women Narratives In The U.S. Resettlement Process, Alys N. Sink

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Within resettlement scholarship, there exists a distinct absence of direct narratives by refugee women about their resettlement experiences within the United States. This absence of voice has even been noted by refugee women representatives during a 2013 UNHCR dialogue stating that: “We call for a model in which the State, the municipalities, NGOs and refugees work together to learn from each other, hear the voices from the grassroots and together develop comprehensive, coordinated and long-term responses” (Speaking for Ourselves: Hearing Refugee Voices, A Journey Towards Empowerment). This study delves into this absence of voice locally, investigating the ways in which …

The Communication Of Cheating: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Communication Major League Baseball Players Use When Accused Of Taking Performance Enhancing Drugs., Andrew Mallon

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

There has always been a strong bond between baseball and controversy. Most recently, this connection has manifested itself in the form of the steroid era in baseball. While that chapter in baseball history has closed, there are lingering effects. Each season, players are receiving suspensions for performance enhancing drug (PED) use by Major League Baseball.

Through different methods of rhetorical analysis, four players will be looked at and critiqued on their statements regarding PED accusations. Reading and analyzing the communication through the lens of these players shapes the strategies that each player chose to implement. In a post-steroid era league, …

President Barack Obama Responds To Gun Violence: A Rhetoric Of Transformation., Gabriela Tscholl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the course of his presidency Barack Obama responded to 15 incidents of gun violence. Moments of tragedy serve as one of the greatest tests of presidential leadership as they require the chief executive to articulate a definition of tragedy that enables citizens both to understand and to work through the experience. It is through the act of definition that presidents increase their rhetorical power, thereby allowing them to advocate or advance specific policy proposals. This thesis examines seven of President Obama’s memorial speeches: Fort Hood, TX (2009); Tucson, AZ (2011); Newtown, CT (2012); Washington, D.C. Navy Yard (2013); Fort …

Launching Conservative Resistance: A Rhetorical Criticism Of The Young Americans For Freedom, Tyler John Snelling

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

At the end of the 1940s, conservatives faced internal divisions, an elitist image, and people supporting government post Great Depression. Liberalism seemed entrenched throughout society. Yet, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the first national, conservative movement, formed in 1960. This thesis investigates YAF’s earliest “publicity” in National Review, an influential magazine, to understand part of what preceded conservatism’s evolution. Publishing “The Ivory Tower: Young Americans for Freedom” by William F. Buckley and the “Sharon Statement,” YAF’s manifesto, side-by-side formed a new identity—young conservative—that empowered activists. From Maurice Charland’s “constitutive rhetoric,” chapter two investigates Buckley’s telling of the past as …

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

Institutional Review Boards And Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study, Johanna Phelps-Hillen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this multi-method dissertation project I conduct policy analysis and utilize results from a discipline-wide survey (n=258) to examine the intersection of Writing Studies researchers’ disciplinary affiliation, research context, and personal disposition in relation to the local implementation of federal policy regarding human subjects research. I elaborate on the context of this project, discussing the September 2015 release of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise and update the Common Rule, 45.CFR Part 46, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s formal comment in response to the proposed rule’s provisions. I discuss the process of designing and implementing …

Composing Focus: Shaping Temporal, Social, Media, Social Media, And Attentional Environments, Jane Fife

English Faculty Publications

Writers must learn to control factors that influence the ability to focus, especially in what some call a culture of distraction. In our efforts to promote metacognition and flexible writing processes, writing teachers need to engage students in study and discussion of factors in our temporal, social, media, social media, and attentional environments that influence focus while composing. This article examines these facets of our contemporary scenes of writing by reviewing recent research in composition studies and psychology about writing and attention, discussing the results of a survey of undergraduate writers’ composing practices, and sharing insights from assignments that help …

Spyfall: Information Games And Scholarly Conversation, Nancy M. Foasberg

Publications and Research

Social deduction games like Spyfall can be used to model the rhetorical concept of the Burkean parlor for students.

Teaching Citation Rhetorically: Reading, Not Just Writing, Nancy M. Foasberg

Publications and Research

Citation practices are often taught as a list of rules, rather than a rhetorical practice necessary to the scholarly conversation. This presentation recommends some pedagogical strategies that encourage students to read citations and consider them as messages, rather than a set of rules to follow.

Science In The Sun: How Science Is Performed As A Spatial Practice, Natalie Kass

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes how spatial organization impacts science communication at the St. Petersburg Science Festival in Florida. Through map analysis, qualitative interviews, and a close reading of evaluation reports, the author determines that sponsorship, logistics, exhibitor ambience, and map usability and design are the factors most affecting the spatial performance of science. To mitigate their effects, technical communicators can identify these factors and provide the necessary revisions when considering how science is communicated to the public.

Revision Crítica Del Concepto De Género En El Discurso Escrito Y Su Aplicación Didáctica A La Enseñanza De Las Lenguas Con Propósitos Específicos. Critical Review Of The Genre Concept In Written Discourse And Its Pedagogical Application To Language Teaching For Specific Purposes, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This paper provides a theoretical review of how the concept of academic and professional discursive genres has evolved, from a linguistic perspective when it first emerged to its current sociocognitive perspective. The stage it has reached is due to intertextuality and interdiscursivity processes caused by the contact between different disciplines. Similarly, the paper discusses some of the most current didactic recommendations on genre teaching proposed by the languages for specific purposes (lps) approach. The discursive genre has been regularly used in lps since learning how to develop the typical genres of a discourse community is a fundamental requirement to succeed …

Apologies For Cross-Posting: Composing Disciplinary Affects And Conflicts On The Wpa Listserv, Zachary Beare

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Drawing on theories of counterpublics, online communication, and affect, this dissertation argues that the Writing Program Administrators Listserv (WPA-L) functions as an important site of disciplinary knowledge-making and theory-building for the field of Composition and Rhetoric. The dissertation examines the WPA-L as a discursive space in which members of the discipline build community, debate pressing issues, and strategize how best to advocate for their individual and collective interests. At the same time that these qualities reveal how the listserv functions as counterpublic space for the discipline at large, the dissertation argues that sub-disciplinary counterpublics made up of individuals marginalized within …

Ted Talks As An Emergent Genre, Julia Ludewig

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "TED Talks as an Emergent Genre" Julia Ludewig analyzes TED talks—short, informational, and entertaining presentations that are given during TED conferences in North America and abroad—as a hybrid and emerging genre. Based on a qualitative interpretation of 14 such talks, she offers a list of recurring thematic, argumentative, and rhetorical features, which she aligns with three parent genres—the sales pitch, the memoir, and the academic lecture. Comparing recent versions of TED talks with three older talks from the 1980s and 1990s, she suggests an historical trajectory, which emphasizes the professional performance character of recent talks and their …

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Constructing A Sociological Biography: A Surprisingly Complex Autobiographical Practice, Sara Louise Wheeler

The Qualitative Report

Biographical statements are an important part of impressions management in the academic milieu. These statements provide an online presence, accompany our academic products, and represent us in the academy. This becomes a high stakes activity, which can be quite anxiety provoking. As a qualitative sociologist with a particular interest in auto/ biography, producing such a statement really ought to be easy - putting into words: who I am, what I do, and where I am currently located. However, writing sociological biographies requires a fine balance, particularly during the early career phase, when we may be juggling projects, research directions and …

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Program, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Program for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Educational Foldout, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Educational foldout for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Educational Foldout, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Educational foldout for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Program, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Program for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

Monsters To Destroy? The Rhetorical Legacy Of John Quincy Adams’ July 4th, 1821 Oration, Jason A. Edwards

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This essay examines how the John Quincy Adams’s foreign policy maxim of “we do not go in search of monsters to destroy” has been appropriated in contemporary foreign policy, including the recent 2016 presidential campaign, arguing his aphorism are authorizing words that validate and ratify the positions of pundits, politicians, and policy-makers of not only critics of U.S. foreign policy, but those who defend it. Mapping Quincy Adams’s aphorism allows us to explore the boundaries and direction of America’s role in the world and how it impacts America’s exceptionalist ethos.

Toggling The Switches, Zach Thomas

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In this paper, I use Richard Lanham's work within the field of rhetoric to explore the rhetorical implications of multilingualism and code switching. Specifically, I will discuss and question some of the basic assumptions of employing another language: What is at stake when we communicate with others in another language, especially native speakers? How might using an L2 language and recognizing/using different dialects within that language cause a speaker to reconsider their native tongue? What does the presence of numerous regional peculiarities and nonstandard varieties within languages say about our desire for "ideal" or "standard" speech?

Ua1f Ogden-Robinson Oratorical Contest Winners, Wku Archives

WKU Administration Documents

List of winners of the Ogden-Robinson oratorical contests. These two oratorical contests originated in the Ogden College in 1885. The Robinson award is given to the winner of a contest for freshmen and sophomores. The Ogden Medal is given to the winner of the upperclassman contest. Since the merger of Ogden College and WKU the even is generally held on or near Ogden College Founders’ Day which is observed on the first Friday of April.